Quite Utterly Spent
by ncfan
Summary: To look at Elwing is to delve back into the past.


I own nothing.

* * *

At least the place does not remind her of Menegroth. The city that has sprung up on the shores north of Alqualondë bears no resemblance to the Thousand Caves, and for that, Melian is glad. Even after so much time has passed, she does not think that she could linger in this place if it reminded her of where she had once made her home. The residents call it New Sirion, after the river and the Haven that once existed in Beleriand. Perhaps that is what these white-plastered buildings and flag-stoned streets are modeled after.

It is late in summer; the leaves on the trees are still green, but Melian can sense, practically smell the life going out of them. A month, perhaps, before they begin turning colors, yellow and orange and red and brown. She draws her crimson skirt into her hands so it won't drag on the ground.

New Sirion does not in the appearance of its buildings remind Melian of Menegroth, but soon enough she finds something else that does. Everywhere Melian goes, she hears Sindarin spoken, and not Quenya—in all other parts of Aman, she hears Quenya, or some derivate of it such as Telerin. The wind blows through the streets, mussing her braids, and the Elves begin to spot her, and recognize the one who walks in their midst as she who was once the Maiarin Queen of Doriath.

Melian manages to summon a smile in response to the cries of welcome, the waving, the sight of familiar faces. Elves who were children when last she saw them throw all caution to the winds and run up to her with abandon. A young nís who was no more than a tiny girl when last Melian laid eyes upon her even goes so far as to throw her arms about Melian's shoulders.

"Your Highness!" they cry. Or "Lady Melian!" and it strikes her that these are the only people, Elves or Ainur, in Aman who will call her by the name she has come to call herself in her heart, and not as Melyanna.

"Why have you chosen to visit us this fine day?" they ask.

Melian responds with all the grace she can manage. All the sharp wit in her tongue deserted her after Elu died; she has only just begun to recover it, and now, it seems that it has deserted her again. She has come to visit, she says, possibly come to stay. Her people (for these are her people in her heart, the Sindar, not the Ainur) express their wishes that she _will _stay, for no home seems like home without her there.

Their hope is oddly crushing, but Melian smiles, draws her shoulders straight and keeps on her path towards the tower in the middle of the city, and the court that's sprung up around it. Anor beats down upon her back.

Yes, Melian is here to visit. She is here to visit someone she has never met, someone who was not born until a few months after she left Middle-Earth for Aman, but someone she has reason to be concerned for. Melian is here to visit the one called High Queen of the Sindar, now that Elu is in Lord Námo's care, and Dior has vanished, to where, no one who will speak to Melian on the matter will say. Her only family is here, and Melian wishes to see her. From everything she's heard of Elwing, Melian isn't sure that she is well, that she isn't in need of care.

It's not as long a walk through the city streets as Melian had expected it to be, or perhaps she has simply been walking more quickly than she thought. She was not expected at the court, but the doorman recognizes her, and so does the seneschal. The looks of reverence that comes over their faces makes her uncomfortable, but when she asks to see Elwing, the seneschal accedes immediately.

"_I will take you to the Queen, my Lady. If you will follow me…"_

Melian follows the seneschal down a pathway that leads them to a walled garden. The wind whistles above them, but it does not touch anyone here. It can not reach its fingers down the way the Sun can. Melian is met by bushes and small plants and trees, blooming flowers of riotous colors; she can hear the babbling of a nearby fountain.

Two young nissi in the garb of ladies-in-waiting sit on a stone bench, whispering to themselves and giggling occasionally. They do not seem to recognize Melian, and Melian does not recognize them, but the two nissi seem to know, at least, that she is a Maia, for they stand and curtsey, smiling politely. One of them points to a spot obscured by bush, and Melian and the seneschal turn the corner.

And so Melian sees her, crouched low over a flowerbed, running her brittle white hands over the golden-yellow petals of a primrose.

"My Queen," the seneschal is saying, and Melian barely hears him—is the wind really so loud?, "the Lady Melian is here to see you."

"Thank you," says the Queen in a high, clear voice, without looking up. Her tones barely pass over a whisper, and yet she holds sway over all in her hearing. When Elwing speaks, everyone else listens. "That will be all." The seneschal bows and leaves. "Arodloth, Istil." The two young nissi stand straighter. "You are dismissed for the afternoon. You're free until the evening."

The two ladies-in-waiting curtsey again and leave, leaving Melian and Elwing alone in the garden. Melian stands in silence, saying nothing, not sure what she _can _say to the great-granddaughter she never knew, to the notorious Elwing the White, whom she has heard so much about from the Calaquendi, and so little of it good. So little of it is said aloud, and even less in her presence, but Melian can read hand gestures, grimaces, cold eyes and hearts, and knows what they think. _Mad, obsessive, abandoning mother. Loved a jewel over her own children._

What can she say to Elwing?

Then, Elwing stands, and as Elu's death robbed Melian of her sharp wit, to look at Elwing nearly robs her tongue of speech altogether.

To look at Elwing is to look and see her past and more importantly all the people in it unfolding before her. Melian does not know where Elwing's curls or ridiculously small stature comes from, for it has never been so in any of her own kin, nor in Elu, nor in Beren, nor in Nimloth. But otherwise…

Melian and Lúthien's lustrous black hair and white skin. Elu's sharp jaw, though more finely and femininely pointed, and she sees something of Elu in Elwing's bearing as well, straight-backed, head held high. Beren's inquisitive mouth. Dior's pointed nose. Nimloth's silver eyes. She really doesn't look like her own person, but then, Melian has the feeling, from what she knows, that not being her own person has told much of the story of Elwing's life. And who knows who she takes after in temperament, if anyone at all?

Seeing past that, Melian finds cause for alarm, instead of simple grief. Elwing wears a loose, simple, sleeveless pearl-gray dress. Her hair is loose, her only adornments her wedding ring (a Noldorin custom, Melian knows) and a delicate silver torque about her wrist, beaded with lapis. She is horribly thin. Her arms have no meat on them; they are disproportionately slender. Her neck looks as though it could be snapped with one forceful push of the thumb. Her skin is translucent as sheer silk. Elwing looks very much as though she might blow away in a strong gust of wind.

"Good afternoon," Elwing greets her, dipping her head slightly. She is unsmiling; should the child look so insubstantial? "It's a pleasure to have you here…" she frowns, begins fiddling with the beads on her bracelet "…Grandmother."

"Great-grandmother, dear," Melian corrects her automatically. _Lúthien _was Elwing's grandmother, not Melian, and Lúthien is gone, and calling Melian 'Grandmother' in her place won't bring her back.

Elwing looks away. She's hooked her tiny little shell of a fingernail on the largest bead. "It's less cumbersome."

Melian forces a smile and snakes her arm about her great-grandchild's shoulder. "Why don't we sit, my dear? I imagine we will have a great deal to talk about."

They sit on the stone bench formerly occupied by Elwing's two ladies-in-waiting, but there is more silence than there is talking, at least at first. Elwing is quiet, abstracted. Melian isn't sure of how to say—well, that isn't quite right. She knows very well what she wants to say, what she wants to ask, but she isn't sure how to go about asking it. Eventually, though, Elwing provides the avenue herself.

"I wish he had destroyed the thing when Grandfather brought it to him."

It wasn't quite like that, Melian wants to say. It was more that a great giant werewolf came tearing in to Doriath and they had to cut the Silmaril out of its belly. And frankly, Melian is not sure that anyone save their creator or Yavanna could actually destroy a Silmaril. She herself had instead counseled Elu to give it back to the sons of Fëanor; Melian does not say so aloud, but she did not like the effect the jewel was having on him.

Elwing's face twists. It's the same look Elu got when it had been suggested to him that he should relinquish that which he had sardonically offered up to Beren as the only possible price for his daughter's hand in marriage. "I wish he had destroyed it_", _she mutters. "Better to have just been rid of it. Before…"Her voice cracks, and she falls silent.

Melian barely has time to ponder on the implication that Elwing wishes that the Silmaril was destroyed, but still despises the idea of it going back to those who should have had them by right when Elwing speaks again. "What were they like?"

"Who do you mean, my dear?"

"Grandmother and Grandfather. And Great-grandfather. And Father and Mother and my brothers, I suppose."Elwing chews on her lip. "I don't remember them very well, you see, and I thought you might…" A wistful lonely look comes over her face, sad and longing and hopeful all at once. The hope is the worst. She looks like Lúthien as a girl, staring up at the stars and saying _"But Mama, I'm _sure _there should be something else up there" _and as much as it hurts, Melian can not refuse her.

"Elu—I know you were not born when your great-grandfather died—he was proud and wise—" _and so wonderful and so missed _"—and he was very tall…" Melian finishes lamely. _So tall that I have no doubt that he could scoop you up in his arms and carry you about, even grown as you are. _"Beren was bold and brave, and placed much value in love and hope. Dior was much the same as him." _And as arrogant as his grandfather at the worst of times. _"Nimloth I did not know well, and can not say much of. I remember Eluréd and Elurín not much either, but I remember them both as cheerful, happy boys." _And I do not wish to remember them as children starving in the woods outside Menegroth in the dead of winter. Please do not do that to me._

Elwing's shining quicksilver eyes open wide, filled with starlight left over from last night. "And Lúthien?"

"My daughter was the most beautiful and beloved child there ever was." Melian feels as though she is cracking, breaking on each word. "When she sang, it was as though the stars stopped in the sky to listen."

_There will never be another like her._

They lapse back into silence after this, abstracted and pale. Elwing alternately runs her hands through her hair and buries her face in her hands, as though trying to work up the nerve to say some terrible thing or just trying to banish ill memories. Her creased brow and madly twitching lip suggests the former.

Eventually, Melian can't ignore this any longer, as much as she wishes there was nothing to ignore in the first place. The child's presence opens up the old wounds of grief, so newly shut; she hadn't expected this at all. They call her Melian the Wise, but Melian does not feel very wise when she is with Elwing; she feels as though a child, just learning to talk and crawl. "My dear, are you well."

Elwing springs to her feet, tension crackling in her spindly limbs. Her hitched breathing is loud, sticky, quavering. "No, Grandmother, I find that I am not." A fevered light comes into her eyes, and whether it is the light of grief, hatred or obsession Melian can not say, for in Thingol, in Lúthien, in Dior, Melian never saw this light. Is this all of her own that Elwing has?

"I am hollow; I am empty." Elwing's trembling hand lies atop her breast; the beads on her bracelet clink. "There… There are days when I wake up and I have forgotten that I no longer have it, that I love it no longer, that I hate it. I wake up and it isn't hung around my neck, and I tear the room apart searching for it, before I remember that it's up there. With him." She points to the sky.

Elwing turns her back to her great-grandmother abruptly, but just as abruptly she whirls back around, curls falling down over her face, gray skirt swishing. She is shaking all over now. "What am I without it, I find myself wondering, even now. It wasn't like this for the others, I suppose. I had it since I was a little girl, and it worked on me, fed upon me, hollowed me out so I could hold its light without flinching." She's babbling now, and choking on every other word; Melian doesn't know if she could stop Elwing talking if she wanted to. "And now I don't have it anymore. I don't have it, it's gone, but I still feel so tired, I still feel so _empty_."

_Could I have stopped this?_

_Could I have stopped this, had I stayed?_

"I left my _children. _I left my _boys_. I left them to the mercy of the Kinslayers, to the mercy of the people who had killed my parents and my brothers." Elwing swallows hard, skims her hand over her throat. How long has she wanted someone to say all of this to, and never had anyone to confide in? "The Elves who come to Aman tell me what became of them. They say that the Kinslayers rescued them, and raised them with love. I don't know what's more galling, the fact that I was so blinded by its light that I left my boys behind, or the fact that a pair of blood-soaked _Noldor_ could raise them better than I could. And _him_…" She stares up at the clear blue sky, silver-shot with clouds, and Melian knows all too well for what Elwing's eyes search. "_He_… He was never…"

She is silent. She stands, silent and frail and shaking, the wind whistling overhead, but never touching her. Elwing's hand rests upon her throat, her other wrapped around her waist, her eyes gazing down upon her feet.

Melian can guess of who Elwing was speaking at the last, and she wonders about Eärendil, sometimes, high up in the sky, stewarding the Silmaril across the sky, alone for all eternity. She knows well enough to know that the stories passed around Valinor, that Eärendil comes down from the sky and that Elwing can willingly change her form into that of a bird and come up to meet him, all of this is fiction. Elwing can not change her form. Eärendil never comes down from the sky. But she wonders, even more, about Elwing, and how she feels about the husband who was never home, who was not there to protect their sons, when she could not.

"Eärendil… You blame him, then?" Melian asks, more gently than she thought she would be able to manage.

Elwing's startled eyes snap to her face, as though she had forgotten that Melian was there. After a long moment, she shakes her head, eyes still round as coins. "I am quite utterly spent of blame. I'm tired of blaming him," she says faintly. She runs her hand over her throat, again; her skin looks like ancient parchment, cracked, worn, translucent.

Being tired of blaming him is not the same thing as forgiving him, Melian wants to say. She wants to say that eventually, she got tired of blaming Elu for setting in motion the events that led to their daughter's death and, worse yet, her eternal separation, in the form of Lúthien's re-embodiment as a mortal, but that even to this day, she's not sure that she forgives him. Elu's pride has cost them their daughter unto the breaking of the world, and Melian is tired of blaming him for it, but it's not the same thing as forgiving him. She knows that, and it worries her that Elwing doesn't seem to.

"…stay long?"

Melian catches only the last two words of whatever it was that Elwing said. She looks up and sees that her great-granddaughter has affixed that detachedly polite expression back on her face, solemn and unsmiling. "What is it, child?"

"Will you stay long, Grandmother?" she asks again, giving no hint of what she feels that Melian was not paying attention to her.

"Yes, I was thinking that I might come to live here, if you will have me."

Melian has already made arrangements with Vána and Estë, who both granted her leave to live in New Sirion if Elwing wished for her to stay with her. Estë seemed to feel that this would be good for Melian, to live with her kin, and that it would be good for Elwing as well to have _her _kin living with her. Vána nodded, and said that one must always look after their blood. Melian winced, remembering Vána's eternal childlessness. The Maiar can conceive and bear children when in a physical guise, though they are strongly discouraged from doing so. The Valar and Valier, on the other hand, are incapable. Eru did not want them to bear children.

But as it stands, Melian had a child. She had a grandson, and she had three great-grandchildren, but of all of them, only the one she never knew is still here. It is no longer enough for her to be among the Ainur. She wants, she _needs _the family that she once had.

Elwing reaches for her hand to draw her back into the palace, and smiles for the first time that Melian has seen. Her whole face lights up as she clutches Melian's hand, tight and needy and longing, and tears prickle at the back of Melian's eyes.

Here, at last, is the thing that is Elwing's alone.

* * *

Melyanna—Melian

Nís—woman  
Anor—the Sindarin name for the Sun  
Calaquendi—The Elves born in Aman, especially during the Years of the Trees


End file.
